What features would you like to see appear in dazstudio 5?

Comments

I'd like the render launched in a separate process that leaves DS still useable during a render.

Are you willing to have only 2 cores available for rendering? If not, then DAZ will have to charge you at least $300 just for the 3Delight license. Right now, you can run the render separately. Just export to RIB (advanced Render Settings Tab) and use the standalone 3Delight free version, which is VERY fast but limited to 2 cores. The version run from DS is allowed to use all cores, but is limited by the DLLs API.

Just export to RIB (advanced Render Settings Tab) and use the standalone 3Delight free version, which is VERY fast but limited to 2 cores. The version run from DS is allowed to use all cores, but is limited by the DLLs API.

Kendall

Okay, I'm going to try this. I have an i7 with 4-core hyperthreading (8 cores), but renders using 3Delight in DS-(insert version number here) are painfully slow, at least when compared to Poser's Firefly. I now wonder if the 2-core standalone version might actually be faster . I've forsaken DS for now because the render times drive me crazy. Thanks for the heads-up on a potential alternative for me.

I'd like the render launched in a separate process that leaves DS still useable during a render.

Are you willing to have only 2 cores available for rendering? If not, then DAZ will have to charge you at least $300 just for the 3Delight license. Right now, you can run the render separately. Just export to RIB (advanced Render Settings Tab) and use the standalone 3Delight free version, which is VERY fast but limited to 2 cores. The version run from DS is allowed to use all cores, but is limited by the DLLs API.

Kendall

I wonder what the actual licensing deal is between DAZ and 3Delight.

I'm not thinking of multiple instances of 3Delight render windows. Just the same single render-in-a-window as now but with the ability to keep tinkering in DS while its rendering.

The same behaviour as Cinema 4D, whenever I go to render it warns if a render is already running and asks if it should abandon the current render to start the new one.

Love the ability to delete content, ghost files etc. from within daz, and drag and drop organization. I also want a better keyword search. If I install content, I should be able to find it, but I seem to spend a great deal of time locating content, and filing it properly.

Love the ability to delete content, ghost files etc. from within daz, and drag and drop organization. I also want a better keyword search. If I install content, I should be able to find it, but I seem to spend a great deal of time locating content, and filing it properly.

yeah, delete, move content and more, straight from within studio souds very nice to have

More noise! I would like to see more noise generators, such as Improved Perlin, available as pre-made Shader Mixer bricks. And a Blinn specular brick. I know I'm being a wuss for asking for these instead of making them, but they would sure be handy for adding procedural bump and specular maps.

I'd like the render launched in a separate process that leaves DS still useable during a render.

Are you willing to have only 2 cores available for rendering? If not, then DAZ will have to charge you at least $300 just for the 3Delight license. Right now, you can run the render separately. Just export to RIB (advanced Render Settings Tab) and use the standalone 3Delight free version, which is VERY fast but limited to 2 cores. The version run from DS is allowed to use all cores, but is limited by the DLLs API.

Kendall
...would it be that difficult to offer a "background" rendering mode or an outside process like the Queue Manager in Poser Pro 2020/2012 have? Not having the main application hogging valuable RAM while rendering a big scene would be a huge benefit.

Also, what about a "Pause/Resume Render" feature like Lux and even Bryce have?

The latest release of the standalone 3Delight frequently returns TDL_MAKE errors when using older content which the built in version does not experience.

For Daz Studio to really "grow-up", it needs to include rendering options that make more efficient use of system resources than it currently offers.

If Renderman/3Delight is that inflexible, maybe other render engine options should be considered. If Daz really wants to "step up" without passing a huge cost to the customer base, there is LuxRender.

Hyperthreading Hexa and possibly even Octa-core CPUs will replace today's Quad core processors just as Quads supplanted Duo cores. Limiting their potential and speed by maintaining a bulky setup whereby the application must be running concurrently with the render engine or relying on a standalone that only uses 1/3 to 1/4 of the processor's full potential is a step backwards in a world that is moving ever forward.

If Renderman/3Delight is that inflexible, maybe other render engine options should be considered.
<...>
Hyperthreading Hexa and possibly even Octa-core CPUs will replace today's Quad core processors just as Quads supplanted Duo cores. Limiting their potential and speed by maintaining a bulky setup whereby the application must be running concurrently with the render engine or relying on a standalone that only uses 1/3 to 1/4 of the processor's full potential is a step backwards in a world that is moving ever forward.

The problem is not that 3Delight is inflexible, it is that it is powerful -- a pro-level renderer that you're getting to use in DS for free, without the limit to 2 cores of the normal free version.

I don't know...$50 for 8 GB of DDR3 or $600 for an unlocked stand alone...hmmm...

Memory is cheap. Upgrading to a 8 core CPU and enough RAM to make it so it doesn't matter is still a lot cheaper than an unlocked 3Delight license...(I'm looking at an 8 core CPU, motherboard and 32 GB RAM for right under $300 as my next upgrade).

DS 4 and onward NEED to be in a 64 bit environment...the complexity of the software/features and so are too much for 32 bit (just under that edge for DS<4.5, with 4.5.1.6 being right on that edge). If you don't have a 64 bit environment, don't expect everything to work properly. The 2 GB RAM in the specs is the absolute BARE MINIMUM. 8 or more is the 'happy spot'...with 4 being just adequate and 6 being 'OK, we can get some real work done, but not too much...</p>

Of course we can go back to 512 x 512 textures (max), under 20K poly base figures and limited lighting/shader and other options...and run on 32 bit 1 GB systems.

...to upgrade from the duo-core licence to unlimited cores is actually 850$ (+250 to go to Quad core + 600 to Unlimited cores/threads).

Rendering is also a function of the CPU. Having to keep the application open while rendering still places an extra load on CPU resources, which in turn impacts the render engine's performance. The elegant solution is to be able to render in queue or background. Apparently the current 3Delight licence agreement does not permit that which is unfortunate.

Even with a tonne of RAM to throw at rendering, the more efficient the process, the faster and smoother it will run. The current setup with Daz Studio/3Delight is at best, clunky.

Please don''t take my suggesting as hating. But what I want to use daz Studio for I can no longer use the new daz4.0 or 4.5 because it does not animate well,
so for starters. if i could make some suggestions for things I would like to see.

1) compatibility with the .DAZ and PZ3 file format instead of just the new .DUF or DSA ones. This would eliminate alot of poser daz compatibility issues.
2) come up with a better working autofit tool so Genesis will animate with a lot less work with conforming clothing & shoes.
3) Make Daz 5 able to use older Plugin model effects like Nerds fire &smoke; tool , wave tools & Dreamlight lighting products.
3) Add the ability to work with IDL lighting and SSS Shader maps. this would make Daz more inline with compatibility with Posers SSS Maps and Make Dson a more useful. tool.
5) Make Daz more compatible with Animate2 and Fix the bugs with genesis using Aniblocks ,

6) And lastly I know this maybe asking much , but it would be neat if we had a option to add render engines such as Renderman, Vray, Matel ray, etc. instead of having to always export our projects with FXB to another programs. this would be a great step in speeding up workflow for rendering.

The only reason I started with Daz was to use it for flash animations in web sites .. and since then i have tried to take it to a new level for High Def short story animations , and to be honest animating. Daz4.5 with genesis is way more work & effort than than its worth. So until then these things are fixed I'll keep using your previous version of daz 3 Advanced and will only buy products that will work for Daz3 and poser. OR the .DAZ & PZ3 files formats.
For these reasons are why I have not purchased any genesis clothing or Character models. because right now the programs and products are to much to work with in animations than its worth.

Actually, I'll up the ante and ask for an eyedropper tool to be able to select any color which is already in the scene. Much easier to be able to adjust the diffuse to match the color of one thing to another.

While I have become somewhat accustomed to 4.5 I don't' do any animation yet as I am still in 32 bit. I do notice that posing/morphing Genesis does weird things to the figure momentarily so I can imagine the pain this would be to animate smoothly. I also notice that when I reopen a scene there is poke through on some clothing (usually Gen4 content) that wasn't there the last time I saved the scene. Hence I find myself having to run the smoothing modifier over it as well as adjust the collision iterations again.

So Nerd3D's plugins won't work in 4.5? That's a shame as I have a number of them including the aforementioned Fire and Smoke as well as the Fog Tool Deluxe, Waves on the Beach, Dust Trail, and Footsteps effects tools.

Alas, plugin updating is the responsibility of the vendor. I can understand to make the core application "backwards compatible" bloats the programme top the point it can become unmanageable and affect overall performance. I am still a bit miffed at DreamLight not taking the time to update LDP2 while releasing new models, "one shot" light sets and "hard selling" training programmes. If LDP is to be orphaned, why not just sell the rights to Daz so it can be updated and integrated into the app? Personally I like the appearance it gives to scenes and it has a much simpler workflow than UE or other IDL light systems as you don't need to mess with light probes or IBL spheres to get the proper ambient effects for the scene.

I'm all for being able to port to other render engines, especially those that can be run in background or through a queue operation (the latter very beneficial for animating). Even in 64 bit with gobs of RAM it still makes the process more efficient and thus more elegant when you don't have the application taking up CPU resources. Render time is not the only issue either, crashes can still happen for reasons other than memory limitations (although one member here actually managed to crash a 48GB system just with IBL and lots of reflectivity). I've had the standalone 3Delight barf on shaders of older content throwing back a laundry list of TDLMake errors while leaving me with a wonderful render of the .objs (sans shadows after spending a lot of time setting up the lighting).

I would love to be able to send a Daz scene to Blender's Cycles render engine, and would even be willing to save up to get something like Maxwell (which does a super job with skin textures).

1) GoZ Bridge updated to allow for texturing. So say you have a blank Genesis in the scene. Click the GoZ bridge button and off to ZBrush it goes. Invoke what ever paint tool you like, make your base skin, click the GoZ button in ZBrush and it's back in DAZ Studio. There is a little link to the newly created texture maps saved in a Temp folder you simply grab and save to keep safe.

To take it further it would be nice if DAZ Studio would support PSD files at this point since this is a good file format to export from ZBrush.

4) Automated way to make new fitting templates. Load your desired figure in the scene, load up Genesis tool would analyze the figure and create a shape for Genesis, default stance and all and then save it out as a morph target as well as a template for refitting clothing to Genesis.

Sorry, that one won't ever happen. It has nothing to do with DS and everything to do with the scripting language used. Qt like Python is ever evolving and it's gone beyond what those plugins were written in. There is a way, but nobody is willing to provide uncompiled/source code plugins...

3) Add the ability to work with IDL lighting and SSS Shader maps. this would make Daz more inline with compatibility with Posers SSS Maps and Make Dson a more useful. tool.

Maybe add the ability to easily import shader source code files and have them appear in ShaderMixer or Shader Builder as bricks?

Make Shader Builder and Shader Mixer 'less' scary and more accessible...

As to image based lighting, again...why? 3Delight has had it for nigh on to forever...

Granted DS doesn't have a fancy interface for it, but there is more than one to get it. But providing an easy to use interface that isn't UberEnvironment would be nice.

5) Make Daz more compatible with Animate2 and Fix the bugs with genesis using Aniblocks ,

From what I've seen, granted I don't do much animation, but the problem isn't compatibility so much as it is trying to use old Aniblocks, made for a previous generation figure. I don't see where there is any benefit in crippling the newer figure to make it 'work' with old material. What's needed are updated Aniblocks.

I'd love to see a real physics engine (DAZ has people familiar with Bullet on staff...). That would solve the dynamic hair, cloth and collisions problems.

An 'autosave' feature....something that saves to a 'scratch file' or something every 10 minutes or so. Then that gets used to restore from in the event of a crash.

Rigging for skirts that doesn't put a distortion of the maps center front and back. I've been getting it even with skirts of clothing built for Genesis. And not just long skirts. Any length skirts.

Related to that, autofit that can handle long skirts. Again, *without* putting a major distortion right in the center front and back.

A lot of that isn't Autofit. It's how the skirt is constructed/grouped. To 'fix' that, most of the existing group assignments in the piece would need to be wiped out and new groups made. Not something that can very easily be automated. But something like RAM suggested, more options with a wider variety of bones already set up should help, but probably not eliminate it.

Or if the actual geometry was different (different concentrations of polys in different areas), then there would be more room for adjustment, as each poly would have to move/stretch less...

With the existing Autofit...sometimes converting to SubD before autofitting will eliminate some of the problem areas...

Dang...that reminds me...I found a geometry problem with the knee length dress projection template geometry....that may account for some of the oddities that sometimes happen with various fits. (need to see if I can remember my bugtracker password...)

Oh I know it isn't simply a problem with autofit. Not when I get the same thing in skirts of outfits that are native Genesis outfits. It seems to be a crudeness in the triax rigging when applied to skirts. It does a beautiful job with pants, or stockings or anything that follows two legs. But skirts gave a glitch, that has somehow become even more evident since the DSON import was released (although I know it was there before, but it wasn't so obvious).

It's almost as if any skirt beyond a certain micro-mini length needs a whole different rigging. Which is a bloody shame, since effectively having a built-in sit morph was worth a fairl amount of awkwardness. But the distortion is bad enough now that it's almost enough to jettison the whole issue, and just use Gen4 skirts parented and scaled, and use their traditional rigging.

Hi mjc1016- I thought I began my "suggestion" not complaints, stating my primary interest in using Daz was for animation and Daz advertizes it for animation use... Daz 3 advance I can animate very well , as well as poser. (most of the time). and I never said i could not animate daz 4.5 its just more trouble than its worth. If you just want Daz Studio for rendering still graphics or making png layer pieces for Photoshop, than genesis is great for that.. but when it comes to animation it needs work believe me, i have been trying to work with it for the last year

Also the Nerds other VFX tools work well in Daz 3 and in any version of poser from p5 to pp2012. Myself and many others have spent tons of money on buying them all, So why would we not like to see them not work in a new version of daz?, seeming they still sell them on the site for daz and poser programs. an they still work in any version of poser. bringing back the compatibility of the DAZ. & PZ3 files would go along way.. I didn't ask to do away with the DUF & DSA files just make it so we can still us the DAZ & pz3 ones with in the program with out autofit tool. it could be like blending daz3 and daz 4. 5 together as one program and I know it could be done it more do they want to work that hard to make it happen.

Everything i had listed had to do with improving animation using daz including the sss maps suggestion..they are lighter and need less expansion room. for lighting. and render faster and when your rendering a 300 key frame scenes or more I want to try too turn weeks of render time into days or hours.

The auto-fit tool works great for still pictures & graphics . But in animation not so much .. conforming clothing fly-off and then fly back on the character during the animation cycle on older gen4 especially if your making complex animations like i have been,and even some genesis clothing have issues with animation.., plus tons of poke through issues and so on... and when you save a scene for later use using older gen4 products you have to go back and re-smooth everything after it reloaded the scene for (animation.) again I spent tons of money on this Daz and poser products that still work in all version of poser but not in Daz.anymore what is wrong in suggesting better compatibility with what they sell?

The on going issue with Animate2 for animation and genesis with the shoes crunching up and some character toes will curl up once you add the ani block. and a big issue i have with daz4.5 and ani-block that is most frustrating is when you add a ani-block to a character you spent a hour or so setting up getting the morphs right, it's all lost once you add the ani-block to genesis, the morph will revert the character to the default morph and having to add a script to correct it for every render cycle is a pain and slows work flow. something you don't have to worry about in still graphics. The ability to work with other render engine is something everyone has been asking for a long time and Poser is already compatible with renderman using poser fusion so poser is a step ahead of daz

I can make still graphics all day long with daz4.5 but that is not where my interest is in using a Daz program. and i have spent a lot of money at renderosity and runtime dna since genesis came out. I'm just like everyone else here . I only buy what I can use in the programs that work best for me in what interst me. Gensis interest me .. it just does not work to fit my interest.

Thank you for your comments on setting me straight on what can and can't be done. with what I had suggested. :)

The only thing I'd like to see is a 'clothify' option similar to Poser's cloth room. Things like dresses and baggy outfits would suddenly flow a lot better, and it would eliminate a lot of the issues surrounding autofits, as well as provide a useful tool for curtain drapes or bedsheets. Since moving to Daz, that is the one thing I miss more than any other. Poser's cloth room was incredibly versatile so you could turn almost any outfit into a dynamic one.

shortcut keys would be nice...yes 2 realtime render and also still quicker renders...movie maker looked awesome...plus the latest animate plugins i just bought...better 3d connexion intergration...the ability 2 control object scene or camera with xbox controller...also an ipad app probably for shortkeys or some sort of interface controll...also some better luxerender integration...

Actually, I'll up the ante and ask for an eyedropper tool to be able to select any color which is already in the scene. Much easier to be able to adjust the diffuse to match the color of one thing to another.

Here is what drives me nuts with your software. When you want to pose or move your character the control axis is either right on top
of the thing you want to move as a finger, or so far away that it is not even in the same room as with moving a character. It needs to
be smart and be in the sceen you are in, and not on top of the thing you want to move. Or have a button on it to move the control
wherever you want it, so you can see what you are doing.

And it drives me nuts that I cannot put all the expressions I use everyday in one place, because they are for different characters,
so they don't show up. So I have to stick some in Actors, Wardrobe and Props and some in Render and flip back and forth between
them just to put the right expression or pose on a character. If we want to stick stuff in the wrong category who are you to make
it where we can't, it is arrogance on your part. (Like Bill Gate telling me I cannot go into my own folders, it is my computer not his.)

And it drives me nuts that I cannot make my own expressions and move the face, mouth and tongue as I wish. They should
be able to move just as a body part as a hand, finger or leg etc. The eyes you can move, but that is it. If you zoom in on the
face then parts should show up to click on and the axis control comes up as any other part of the body. To do it on the fly.

People say that Daz3D is just a toy for those with no talent and just pose Barbie dolls, why not do as Cinema 4D has finally
done and put in a sculpting tab that leads to a place where you can have very precise tools, instead of the junk they
have in Zbrush or 3Ds Max etc. which have no precision and you can only move goop around, and to make a straight line
is very hard. Make the tools (brushes) as in Photoshop the Polygonal Lasso Tool could be used to make lines or shapes in
the mesh and push a key as Shift or Alt at the end of the loop to either raised or lowered the mesh, as a line between robot parts
on a body. Planes to flatten parts, built in preset objects as 3D Coat, things like that would blow Zbrush away as a production
tool. The software would not be a toy but become a production tool, and being able to export to any other tools and render tools.